Request for LEGAL ADVICE / AID in defense of a LART

[karlthepagan.livejournal.com]

Hail Eris!

The lart began when I saw several friends complain about wiccans_unite. The maintainer of the new comm had copied the user info, icons, and interests straight out of wiccan, where the wiccans_unite maintainer had a falling out over various new Wiccan topics which are familiar to several of us.

Thus wiccans_untie was born. Days later blackthornglade was libeled, and indicated to be the creator (since they had joined, while I had not). I quickly corrected the mistake, but found an abuse complaint of copyright infringement against me. Fortunately the claim was fraudulent, as the content in wiccans_untie's info originally appeared in wiccan and silvertree has (if I interpret "Np." correctly) granted her permission for the use of that text in wiccans_untie (she was in fact notified as soon as I created the lart.)

Unfortunately the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires that I submit to a legally stringent commitment. The abuse team has advised me to seek legal representation, so here I am!

FYI I am in the 9th Federal Legislative District(?) Eastern Washington U.S. Court District (easy, 30 minute drive for me).

Comments

[elf]

If this is where you came to find legal representation, errr, I think you're setting a terrific base for a "diminished capacity" plea to whatever.

That said, I'm glad you posted it... I predict a great need for Discordians of all ilks to need to understand aspects of the DMCA-in-action.

(Dammit, I will *not* create a pile of throwaway identities to go trolling at emmyrose's silly community. I really don't have time.)

I do happily exhort all members of Fifthtrinity to join wiccans_untie and see if it can get more members than Wiccans_unite. I'm always pleased when the mere existance of a meme (in this case, an LJ community) can drive someone else up the wall, especially when the someone else is a truly deserving hypocritical jerk.

I'd also like to know if members who join the Untie community get pre-banned from Unite. Anyone up for pointless memetic warfare research?

[stollman.livejournal.com]

In point of fact, he was not requesting (and has not received) legal representation.

A diminished capacity plea is only relevant to a crime of specific intent; see Fazzini, 871 F.2d at 641; see also Smith, 638 F.2d at 132.

All that aside, this really is a simple situation. Somebody has tossed out an accusation because it's easy to do and causes stress in someone else they don't like. The response is to send a simple "that's bullshit" letter, forcing them to put up or shut up. This is the only reasonable response (so long as the accusation is unfounded) and so the question is limited to the correct legal wording of the response letter. DCT has kindly provided a well researched, correctly worded, completely sufficient template letter that has been used successfully by hundreds of people over the last couple of years.

IP law isn't simple, but it's not black magic. As in other parts of life, one is probably better off going it alone than feeding the lawyers.